


Who'll Have Mercy on Your Soul?

by synchronized_strangers



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Disturbing Themes, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-17 09:20:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/550021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synchronized_strangers/pseuds/synchronized_strangers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end there’s no dignity, no stoicism or bravery because there’s no one left to be brave for. He cries and screams and begs and begs and please, please, let it end…</p>
<p>When the building collapses he thinks that maybe there is a God, and then he doesn’t think, because there’s nothing.</p>
<p>When he wakes up, he knows he was wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who'll Have Mercy on Your Soul?

**Author's Note:**

> If you're triggered by fire, or violence, this probably isn't for you, but if you're reading about Peter Hale, you probably already know that. :)

They huddle near the floor, faces pressed desperately into shirt sleeves or collars, eyes streaming and lungs burning from the smoke, humans in the center because when they catch fire it doesn’t heal. The scent of flesh is heavy and cloying, clinging to his throat and making him gag. He can taste the fat and the stink of burned blood. The flames crackle and howl when the wind gets hold of them, a roaring in his ears that won’t quit. It drowns out the screams but he can still feel them, echoing through the skin he covers with his own.

By the time they start to burn in earnest, when their healing can’t keep up, he grants them mercy. A slit throat is far, far better than the flames. The humans are dead by the time it gets to that, by the time the air is so hot it scorches his lungs and his shirt is burning against him and the blood is boiling where it coats his skin and he can only panic because _there’s no one to kill him, too._

In the end there’s no dignity, no stoicism or bravery because there’s no one left to be brave for. He cries and screams and begs and begs and please, _please, let it end…_

When the building collapses he thinks that maybe there is a God, and then he doesn’t think because there’s nothing.

When he wakes up, he knows he was wrong.

+

There’s pain. He lives it, breathes it, every breath _is_ it. It’s his constant and his anchor and it’s not enough.

He smells ash and blood and burning skin. Some of it is his own. On the good days, it’s his own.

Peter doesn’t have many good days.

+

If he had to compare the experience to something else, he’d say it’s like being behind a two-way mirror. He can see, and he can hear, but he can’t interact. At first he spends a good deal of his time watching. Or at least, he has memories of what occurred. He’s not sure his experience was anything so coherent as that.

Living in a state of so much pain that he retreats from consciousness might be closer. Flees screaming into his own mind. Goes quietly mad. When that's finished, he goes mad again.

He hears words like “extensive damage” and “catatonic.” He hears Laura cry and feels Derek skulk and they smell like pack and fear and grief. Derek reeks of guilt.

But Peter spent an eternity smelling pack and fear and grief in a basement filled with death and it’s too much. He runs from them, too, inside, until one day they’re gone and they don’t come back.

After that, he stops "watching". There is nothing to see.

His body won’t die. His mind won’t stop.

+

There’s fire, all the time, burning him, burning his family, burning his world. There’s the smell of meat roasting, the air thick with liquified fat. It sits on his skin, sinks into his pores. It infects him until the fire starts to feel cleansing because at least when he’s burning he isn’t sticky with blood.

He lives that day over and over again until the worst part isn’t them dying, it’s the perfectly ordinary day that leads up to it. It’s the way he picks Anna up to spin her around while she shrieks with laughter. It’s the way Rose rolls her eyes at him because she doesn’t like rough housing in the kitchen. It’s the way Adam touches her waist and smiles and the way they look at him indulgently because they know Peter always wanted children but never found the right person.

It’s the way he has to herd everyone downstairs because the house is surrounded and if he’d known what he was sending them to he would have killed them all before the hunters struck the first match.

Them he can’t forget, and he’s got so much time to remember. Uninterrupted time.

He’s asleep and he isn’t. He’s aware and he’s lost. Time passes and stands perfectly still. For him there’s one day, and it lasts forever.

Peter dreams and drifts and waits until one day he doesn’t. Is it still hell if it’s his life?

+

He’s been alone so long that when he feels her hand, scents her on the wind - Laura, pack, home, safe - he doesn’t think, doesn’t know what he’s done until he’s done it. He shows her mercy.

He’s wrist deep in her gut, blood pouring over his hands and his name on her lips and she looks so betrayed. How is that fair? What right does she have to feel betrayed? She left him. She abandoned him and he’d shown her mercy. He _saved_ her.

When he understands what he’s done, he isn’t sorry. He has nothing to be sorry for. Now, Derek, on the other hand…


End file.
